Abstinent alcoholics often denycraving for alcohol but still show a high level of relapse. The eyeblink response to startling noise was used as an indicator of the emotional response to alcohol-related, positive, negative and neutral visual stimuli in abstinent alcoholics, social drinkers and rarelydrinking controls. The cognitive evaluation of the stimuli was assessed byratings of subjective craving, valence and arousal. The startle response of the alcoholics to alcohol-related stimuli was significantlyinhibited despite an aversive overt stimulus-evaluation. These findings indicate that alcohol-related stimuli mayhave appetitive incentive salience for alcoholics in spite of verbal reports of craving and valence to the opposite.
